


There is No Peace That I've Found So Far

by justsleepwalkin



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: Aliens, Drama, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Identity Issues, Issues capital "I", Pete's World, very light Rose Tyler/Tenth Doctor (duplicate)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-25
Updated: 2014-07-25
Packaged: 2018-02-10 09:31:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2019990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justsleepwalkin/pseuds/justsleepwalkin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Maybe if we just stay off the radar, Torchwood will leave us alone!”</p><p>“There's an <i>alien walrus</i> sleeping where our <i>porch used to be</i>! They're never going to leave us alone!”</p>
            </blockquote>





	There is No Peace That I've Found So Far

**Author's Note:**

> Somehow magically inspired by a TFLN:  
> (863): The porch is breathing. 
> 
>  
> 
> Title from Snow Patrol's "Set Fire to the Third Bar."  
> [(♫)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfa9yxCpWoA)

__

He doesn't want to go out there. He can't, alright? Call him scared, but he's human now. He can't just gallivant off into these situations anymore, no matter what Rose says about “well that's what your (his) companions always do (did).”

It's when Jackie says, cradling the baby in one arm, and holding a plunger in her free hand, “ _I'll_ do it, get out of my way!” that he rushes to the front door and flings his arms over it to fend the rest of the household off. 

His own life is one thing. The life of his family is another. 

The door slowly creaks open under his hesitant hand. Actually, it's more like one of those _shrieks_ that make you flinch and feel bad for whoever was nearby. He has to wonder if they have any WD-40 around, or some of this useful hazy blue goo that used to be in the TARDIS, after some shop dealer pawned it off on him—well, the Doctor. At the time it seemed like a ripoff. Now, it's a parallel universe away, and doesn't that just suck?

For one quavering moment he thinks it's gone, that he has nothing to worry about, that he can go back to his cup of tea (even if it's probably gone cold by now), but then he can _hear it_. The quiet, rumbling murmur from beneath the wood planks of the porch. The Citronella candles scattered about in different sections (he really, _really_ hates mosquitoes, but they don't bite “the” hand; never the hand) rattle with each deep breath. 

Maybe if he offers the creature tea (cold), it'll just... skitter elsewhere. 

“I'm sorry, we're not renting out that part of the house!” he calls, still hiding, barely even peering outside. It could breathe fire (it probably would have already burned the house down)! It could have a taste for mostly-human Time Lords (that was more likely)! He's too young to die, and for once he can actually _say_ that and it's _true_. 

A tongue slathers its way upwards, between a small space in the planks, bumping into a plastic chair before it jerks back into the depths.

He wonders if it's part snake. Maybe using the tongue as a sensory-aid. So, he asks it, “Are you part snake?” 

“Don't be _rude_ ,” Rose hisses from somewhere behind him. 

He snaps his head around to peer at her. “It's not rude! I'm just curious!” And maybe it was a bit rude. He hasn't even said hello, or asked how it was feeling, or if it cared about the weather at all. 

There isn't even a chance for him to return his focus when the porch explodes.

Well, alright, it doesn't _explode_ , but that's what he's saying when he retells this story (he doesn't want to ever retell this story). He'll say that because “exploding porches” make him appear more dignified when he pedals backwards into Rose with a bit of a shriek, quite like the door reeling open on its hinges. 

“I'm sorry!” he yells. “I bet you're a very nice not-snake!”

“ _Doctor_!” Rose berates him, and since he's half-clinging to her he can see how she flinches when she uses that name. He told her not to use that name months ago, but he didn't exactly give her a replacement option. Whenever he thinks about giving her a “replacement option” he feels a little sick at his own word choice. 

Jackie barrels by them before he can extract himself from Rose and do something that's more useful than contemplate his existence in this exact instant. He hasn't really trained his brain to handle multitasking like it used to.

“I have a strict No Alien policy on my property!” Jackie yells, holding the plunger over her head like it was _Excalibur_. She shields the baby from wood dust and the baby simply coos, not a care that his mother is batshit crazy. Kid's going to grow up to be a champ. “Get your rotting hide outta here before I call the exterminators!”

Its hide actually _is_ rotting, he realizes; and no, it's not very snake-like at all. More walrus, giant teeth included. He would really know what exterminator service would deal with something like _this_.

Unless she means Torchwood.

…

Ah, she probably means Torchwood.

He doesn't particularly _like_ that brand of exterminators, then. It makes him feel a pang of pity for the walrus-like alien, even when its long tongue lolls out of its mouth and dribbles a hazy blue goo that—

That looks awfully familiar. 

It shakes wood shards off its hide, tail pulling back like its winding up for a baseball swing. 

“Jackie, get back inside _right now_!”

“Don't think you can tell me what to do—”

“Pete is _going_ to _murder me_ if you don't get back inside!” he argues.

“Mum, it's really not safe!”

Angry, Jackie shuffles back inside. 

He slams the door in time. Wood and unlit Citronella candles and a plastic chair slam into the closed door from the alien's tail-swing. Jackie lowers the plunger and half leans on it, smiling over her baby while he pulls on a curl of her blonde hair. “I thought you two stole a cache of alien guns from Torchwood when you flew the coop? Where'd those get to?”

Rose nibbles at the inside of her lip and looks a little guilty. “Storage unit across town. Thought it'd be best not to have them near the house in case Torchwood could trace them.”

Jackie rolls her eyes. “Who _else_ would be daft enough to do it? They're going to come knocking one way or another! So you should've at least held on to one or two!”

“I'm really missing those guns right now, myself,” he mumbles, pulling at an ear.

“Shut up,” Rose replies, but her tone isn't very serious.

“Think of the bright side,” he tells them, “if we get a jar of its saliva, we could make a fortune off it.”

Jackie, though she deals with baby vomit, looks disgusted. “I am _not touching_ alien saliva!”

He shrinks away from her meekly. Jackie's scary, alright. Living with her hasn't changed that. 

“Just saying.”

“Get that alien away from my house, or so help me!”

“Right. Come on, Rose. I'm sure there's something we can use in the kitchen.” He drags her away from her mother before that plunger ends up over his face. Outside, the racket sounds like it settled down. Probably curled back up in the remnants of the porch. Lovely. 

Still, he hopes that Torchwood doesn't think _today_ is a good day to come after them with pitchforks and guns. 

“And if you turn my kitchen into another 'science experiment' I'm not forgiving you this time!” is their sendoff. 

“You mum may never forgive us,” he tells Rose when they get to the kitchen and he's pulling open cabinets and drawers. He finds a plastic container that would be perfect for collecting alien glue. Man with a mission. If he fixes the shrieking door, maybe Jackie _will_ forgive them for the science experiment he's about to try. 

Rose hops up to sit on the center island. “She's said that a bunch now, though. I think we'll come out of this one unscathed, at least from her.”

“I'd like to be unscathed from the walrus, too.”

“Maybe you shouldn't have called it a snake.” 

“ _Part_ snake, Rose. Part.”

He's mixing condiments in a large metal bowl that they usually use for when they attempt to make pancakes for the whole family. Usually they also somehow manage to fail horribly in one way or another and just go out for breakfast. He asks Rose to hand him different spices from the rack besides her, and she's nice enough to not ask him if he's trying to bake their porch alien a cake. That's true friendship, right there. 

“I'm sorry I called you 'the Doctor.'”

That's the opposite of true friendship, right there.

He frowns and focuses on his work, covered in flour down his front and trying to open a jar of pickles. “It's fine,” he answers, even though they both know that it really isn't. He makes an irritated face at his life and at these stupid pickles, and hands the jar to Rose without a word.

She pops it open and hands it back, just as silent. 

They like to think their lives will one day stop having these awkward moments.

They like to think that they'll one day stop hiding behind other aliens and planetary chaos and actually talk about these awkward moments.

Today isn't that day. He pours the pickle juice into his mixing bowl and slides the bowl and a large spoon over to Rose. She starts stirring in a figure-8 pattern. 

“What will this do?” she asks.

“Give it indigestion, maybe,” he says, nonchalant. He stretches towards the pair of small cabinets over the refrigerator. “Oh, and when it burps—which it will—we'll throw a match at it, and it'll probably explode.”

Rose blanches. “I'm sorry, what? Explode?”

“Well, yes. Its internal makeup and all. It's sort of bound to explode anyway, but it's not like it'll eat fire, so we just... have to...” He waves his hand (his “other” hand) as though that explains everything. “Of course, we'll have to lead it away from the house first. Ah, and then promise Jackie that we really will find a way to clean up alien innards off her newly-paved driveway.”

“Which one of us is on leading-it-away duty and which of us is on fire duty?” 

“Rock-Paper-Scissors for fire duty?”

She stops stirring and holds out her hands, fist-on-palm, brow raised, waiting. He assumes the same position and they count off. He loses. “Two out of three?” he half-pleads. Even if the walrus monstrosity doesn't like him already and is more likely to chase after him, he still doesn't want to do it. Rose just squints at him and goes back to stirring. Right. 

He sighs. 

“Okay, one last ingredient... where did the anchovies get to?”

“Dad moved 'em. Started to rearrange things around midnight for some reason. I didn't really ask why. They're in the closet by the basement stairs.” She watches him, then slides off the counter and finds herself the matches. “You think it'll eat this mess just because it has fish on it? I don't think it's an actual walrus.”

“It'll eat it because it has been under our porch for days and probably hasn't eaten _anything_.” He adds the anchovies on top, a garnish that he tries so gingerly to make look nice, but they just sink into the “mess” Rose called it. 

He dips a finger in it. 

Thinks about licking his finger. 

_Nope_. No way. He's not testing his stomach's tolerance. Jackie's cooking does a number on it already. 

“Okay, let's go, I'm sure it'll be fine. You... distract it so maybe it opens its mouth, and I'll just... throw this... and then run. And then you set it on fire.”

“This plan is rubbish, you know that right?”

“I—yes. It's rubbish. We hid our guns, okay. I wanted to keep them, and you hid them.”

“You're trigger happy!”

“That would be good right now!”

“Maybe if we just stay off the radar, Torchwood will leave us alone!”

“There's an _alien walrus_ sleeping where our _porch used to be_! They're never going to leave us alone!” he shouts. Rose's hands ball into fists and she glares at him. He glares back, teeth grit, and managing some form of intimidation despite the bowl with the rancid-smelling concoction in his hands. “You don't even want a peaceful life, so I don't know what you're so up-in-arms about!” He turns away on a heel and marches out of the kitchen, through the living room where Jackie asks about what smells so awful, and to the front door, which he flings open. 

Now he means business. 

“ _HEY_!” he yells, and the walrus rears its head, blinking away sleep and rumbling low. Its jaws come apart and he heaves the concoction towards it, watching as half of it misses its target, but the rest oozes against the creature's face and into its eyes and pores and best of all: its mouth. 

And then, in all his frustration and quiet, underlying anger, he remembers that he's supposed to be doing something else. 

Rose shoulders her way next to him, grabs his hand, and shouts, “ _RUN_!” 

He can't even begin to explain the thrill that trips through him, but he lets himself be pulled, even as nostalgia churns up a memory that isn't really his, that shouldn't even belong to him, and he runs. The alien's tail hits into a window as it about-faces, shattering glass blocking out Jackie's raised voice from inside. They run together and maybe it's okay that he still has issues that he doesn't want to talk about, and maybe it's okay that Torchwood and them had a rather epic “falling out,” and maybe it's okay that he'll forever be terrified of Rose. They skid across the beautifully black asphalt of their driveway, far away enough from the house, and turn to face the alien head-on. Rose hands him a match and they both strike one each on the edge of the matchbox and the belch from the alien almost makes him pass out, but Rose's shoulder near his keeps him steady. They throw the matches in what ends up ruining how awesome they feel as the matches barely fly any distance at all through the air, but its enough that the flames catch on the air from the creature and spread as though the walrus' mouth had been an aerosol can. 

Rose fumbles for him and he realizes _why_ as common sense rattles around somewhere in his brain, among those memories of an old life, and his very own. They're ducking away and covering their heads as fire makes its way inside the creature's mouth and the combination of the two—

Well, he won't have to lie about _that_ exploding when he retells (he still doesn't want to) this story. 

Rose shudders next to him, a look of utter horror on her face. He finds moving to be difficult, too weighed down by a multitude of unexplained substances soaking into his clothes. There's a lot Jackie won't “ever” forgive them for. The kitchen, the driveway, their clothes.

“Maybe we should just move,” he says. “Let Torchwood find this place and deal with all its atrocities. They might think it's a trap or something and decide we're not worth their time.”

“You're worth anyone's time,” she murmurs, staring down at her sleeve. She doesn't watch to see his eyes widen in surprise, already turned away to look at what's left of the creature and their driveway. “...Uh oh.”

“What?” He looks, too. Jackie's standing on what had been left of their porch, mouth hung open and shockingly silent, which meant she was _pissed_ and they were in for a world of trouble. 

“Hey, Mum!” Rose waves. “Let's get Dad and go travel!” 

Jackie spins away and slams the door shut. Probably locks it, too, but there's a broken window that they can haphazardly climb through. 

“We shouldn't have to run forever though. I don't...” Rose hesitates. “I can _do_ 'peace.' It's just... hard. This is hard.”

“I know.”

Her face scrunches up. “I don't even know what to call you and it's been _months_ since that stupid beach. Your passport says _John Smith_ of all the things, which is better than 'John Doe' but how are we supposed to...!”

“I know.”

He does. He _really_ does. 

“I want to bring down Torchwood. They were fine, for awhile, when I needed them, but... That tiny ball of corruption in their ranks, it just festered and it's probably only gotten worse since we left!”

“Okay.”

She looks at him with the same frustration he felt earlier. Maybe he understands Rose Tyler better than the Doctor ever did. 

“And then I want to get a zeppelin.”

That causes him to blink.

“What?”

“A zeppelin. See the world. You know how long I've been here? Under Torchwood's thumb, all the time. I don't even know what else has changed in this universe. I want to find all the differences.” She smiles sadly at him. “It's not a TARDIS, but it's okay, right?”

He manages a smile of his own. He's not sure when he last _really_ smiled. Without sarcasm. Without bitterness. “It's okay.” 

Jackie comes out with as much cleaning gear as her arms can handle. Heavy duty products—she's lived with the two of them, after all. She shuffles over, glares, and drops the stuff. It makes a splash in alien remains. The spray hits his face, but he supposes he deserves that. 

“I'm going to take Tony out and we'll buy more. You'd better be working by the time I'm home.”

“Okay, Mum.”

“Jackie, we're going to destroy Torchwood,” he says to her retreating back. 

She pauses in her step for only a short moment. “It's about damn time,” is her only answer. 

He laughs.

Yeah, about damn time.

“And find a way to fix my porch, too! And the window! And don't even _think_ I didn't see the kitchen!”

And then he cringes. “Torchwood will have to wait.”

“We should have exploded it by the house.”

A grin breaks across his face.

She shakily gets to her feet, trying to keep her hands from touching her sodden clothing. “What were you saying about goo?”

“Oh, it's perfect! We can probably make a whole vat of it! Sell it off on the internet, maybe make enough to buy a zeppelin just from those sales!” He bounces, looking around at all the hazy blue around them, now excited by the prospect of cleaning. 

Yeah, they'll be alright, one way or another.

**Author's Note:**

> I had to look up Tony's name while I was editing this and saw a small detail that the kid is probably in preschool age at least, so... not a baby. But. Whatever. 
> 
> I don't really know how this became so long. I wrote it in one sitting. I just don't even know, okay.


End file.
